U.S. legalized cannabis market shows no signs of slowing down

Market researchers continue their love affair with the budding marijuana industry, with the latest commentary coming from Microcapspeculators.com

Microcapspeculators’ http://microcapspeculators.com/ statement below has been edited for style and readability, but largely retains its original content.

USA Today recently reported that "America's fast-growing marijuana industry appears poised for supercharged growth after winning what cannabis entrepreneurs see as approval from the current administration to forge ahead. "Across the nation, risk-takers have poured billions of dollars into the industry. Mentioned in the commentary includes: NightFood Holdings, Kush Bottles, AbbVie, Innovative Industrial Properties, and Zynerba Pharmaceuticals.

They've built—largely unseen—a powerful network of businesses poised to take advantage of a more favorable federal climate. That industry has already woven itself into the fabric of the states where pot is legal, providing tens of thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in new tax revenues.

Experts say those numbers are now likely to rise rapidly thanks to the president's promised hands-off approach and support of some sort of federal solution.

"Every day we wake up and build this industry. And every day we do that, it's a little harder to shut it down," said Daniel Yi, a spokesman for the California-based marijuana powerhouse MedMen.

There's no denying America's love affair with marijuana is accelerating across the nation as voters loosen laws and grow increasingly comfortable with a drug that has been forbidden for generations. Today, more than 60% of Americans believe marijuana should be legal, double its popularity in 2000, according to a January 2018 poll by the Pew Research Center. That comes against a backdrop of contrasting studies that have offered little insight into how legalization is impacting youth use, stoned driving and border-state black markets."

Now let's take a look at a few companies that could benefit from positive marijuana legislation:

NightFood Holdings
NightFood Holdings, a brand development company pioneering the projected billion-dollar nighttime nutrition category and developing unique products in the marijuana/cannabis/CBD related snack space, recently announced that the company has entered into its first licensing agreement as part of their plan to build a national brand of popular snacks under the powerful

Half-Baked
An initial production run of Half-Baked cannabis infused cookies is expected to be completed shortly, and product should be on shelf during the month of May 2018.

Kush Bottles
Kush Bottles, a leading provider of packaging, supplies, vaporizers, accessories and branding solutions for the regulated cannabis industry, announced yesterday that it has partnered with MainStem, a technology-based ancillary product distribution company for the regulated cannabis industry, to be the inaugural partner for MainStem's Vendor Program (MVP). The company's security is up considerably this year, and back in February hit a 52 week high of $8.51.

AbbVie
AbbVie Inc. discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells pharmaceutical products worldwide. Its Marinol drug is FDA-approved for the treatment of nausea in patients undergoing chemotherapy and is also prescribed to AIDS patients suffering from loss of appetite. The drug is made of a synthetic form of THC and is delivered as an oral capsule.
ABBV recently submitted a marketing authorization application (MAA) to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for risankizumab, an investigational interleukin-23 (IL-23) inhibitor, being evaluated for the treatment of patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.

Cara Therapeutics
Cara Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focusing on developing and commercializing chemical entities designed to alleviate pain and pruritus by selectively targeting kappa opioid receptors in the United States. Cara is developing lead molecules that selectively modulate peripheral CB receptors without targeting CNS cannabinoid receptors. Peripheral CB receptor modulators will be initially developed as a novel therapeutic approach for neuropathic and inflammatory pain, a condition currently without consistently effective therapies. Cara's most advanced CB compound, CR701, is currently in preclinical development.
CARA just released a transcript of its Q1 earnings call: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/edited-transcript-cara-earnings-conference-122442595.html

Innovative Industrial Properties
Innovative Industrial Properties, Inc. is the leading provider of creative real estate capital solutions to the medical cannabis industry. Recently the company announced that it closed on the acquisition of a property located at 2000 Rosanna Avenue in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which comprises approximately 89,000 square feet of industrial space. The purchase price of the property was approximately $5.8 million. At the time of our comment, the company's security was only about 5% off of its 52 week high.

Zynerba Pharmaceutical
ZYNE, a clinical-stage specialty neuropsychiatric pharmaceutical company dedicated to developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutically-produced transdermal cannabinoid treatments for rare and near-rare neurological and psychiatric disorders with high unmet medical needs, is reporting new longer term open label clinical data today in the Emerging Science session of the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in Los Angeles, CA.

Before you surf off this page, you might want to check out this interview from the ST Media content archives: Pot-O-Coffee episode. Yes, we’ve been watching the blossoming legalized marijuana market for a while now—even back when I was editor-in-chief of Package Design magazine.